Q
& A with Dr. Khassan Baiev |
Q. Why did you write The Oath?
A. During the Russian war against Chechnya, I witnessed many terrible things
as a doctor. During the first war, which began in 1994, I just went about
my work treating the wounded. When the second war began in 1999, I decided
the world needed to know what was going on in Chechnya so I began keeping
a diary. I asked my nephew Adam to videotape as much as possible, too. I
wanted to document the suffering so everyone would know.
Q. So you are bearing witness to the horrors of war?
A. Yes. I am against using force to settle disputes. It is ordinary citizens
who mostly suffer not the military. For example, my nephew Adam was murdered
for sending his videotapes to the British news agency Reuters.
Q. What was the most difficult part of being a doctor during this conflict?
A. When I graduated from medical school, we were all required to pledge
ourselves to the Hippocratic oath: do no harm and help everyone in need.
I did just that. I treated all civilians who came to my hospital for help.
I also operated on Russian soldiers, and Chechen fighters.
Q. So you operated on both sides in the war?
A. Yes, and that got me into big trouble. A few of the Chechen extremists
considered me a traitor to their cause. The Russians also considered me
a traitor. Both wanted to kill me. In the end I had to flee.
Q. How did the war between Chechnya and Russia start?
A. For many, many years – actually for 400 years – the Chechen
people have been struggling for independence. When the Soviet Union collapsed
in 1991, Chechnya declared itself independent. The Russians went along with
this for a while, but they decided to use force to bring Chechnya back into
the fold in 1994.
Q. Why weren't the Russians willing to let Chechnya be independent, like
say Armenia or Georgia which were also part of the Soviet Union?
A. It's a complicated question. The Russians were afraid if Chechnya seceded,
other ethnic regions of the Russian Federation would follow and Russia would
break into a number of different states. Russia also wanted to secure the
oil that lies beneath Chechnya; they wanted to preserve the big oil refineries
they had built there. And, finally, the Russians didn't like the encroachment
of western nations like the U.S., Britain, France and others into the Caspian
Sea and Caucasus region. They wanted to make sure they controlled all that
territory.
Q. How did you become a doctor?
A. In my youth, I was a serious athlete and an average student. But I came
from a family where medicine was very respected. My father is an herbalist.
My sisters are nurses. I had a secret desire to find a career in which I
could help people. So when I graduated from high school, I applied to the
Krasnoyarsk Medical Institute in Siberia.
Q. Why did you choose a medical school so far away?
A. I had been to Krasnoyarsk before as an athlete, and I was really attracted
to the place. The people in Siberia are very friendly. I loved the scenery
and the winters.
Q. You say you were an athlete. What kind of sports did you go in for?
A. We Chechens love all the martial arts. I went in for judo, tae kwan do,
wrestling and sombo.
Q. What is sombo?
A. That is a martial art which was developed in Russia after the 1917 revolution.
It is a self-defense sport based on judo. It is gaining popularity now in
America. By the way, in America I took up sports again after a break of
13 years and won the world championship in sombo in my weight class in 2001
in Albuquerque and defended successfully in Shreveport in 2002. I fought
under the Chechen flag and that gave me a lot of satisfaction.
Q. You write about saving a Russian doctor during the war. Please describe
that.
A. In 1995, Chechen fighters asked me to save the life of one of the injured
field commanders, Salman Raduyev. They took me to a secret underground hideout
in the mountains. There I found the commander with a very serious wound
– a bullet had gone in one side of his face and out the other.
Q. And you were able to save him?
A. We saved him, but I told the fighters I needed to have an assistant for
the operation. They brought in a Russian doctor whom they had captured as
a prisoner. We worked well together and after the operation I got him
transferred to my hospital as a doctor-prisoner. Everything went well until
a field commander decided to kill him out of revenge for the murder of a
relative by the Russians. I helped the doctor escape. But then extremists
arrested me, held me in a pit for nine days and threatened to kill me. I
denied helping the doctor escape, and in the end my captors released me
without any explanation.
Q. Do you have a family?
A. Yes, I have a wife named Zara and six children.
Q. Where were they during the war?
A. Mostly they were far from the fighting. When my town of Alkhan Kala was
surrounded by Russian forces and heavily bombarded, I managed to get them
out to Ingushetia, the neighboring province to Chechnya.
Q. Did you have trouble getting supplies during the war?
A. Yes, a lot of trouble. I did amputations with lidocaine, a local anesthetic
used in dentistry. I had to borrow a carpenter's saw to cut limbs because
I had no surgical saw. I ran out of surgical thread and had to use ordinary
household thread to sew up wounds.
Q. How did you escape to America?
A. I was warned that the Russians were trying to arrest me, and I had help
getting out of Chechnya. Physicians for Human Rights, a human rights organization
based in Boston, invited me to the United States in April 2000. The American
Embassy in Moscow gave me a visa and I flew to Washington D.C. before the
Russians' arrest order could be executed. Once in the United States, I applied
for political asylum which I got very quickly. About 10 months later, I
got my family to the States.
Q. Have you had difficulty adjusting to America?
A. It has not been easy. I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. I
have had difficulty learning English. But America has given me a very good
welcome. Even after 9/11, I haven't suffered any discrimination because
I and my family are Muslims.
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